synonym for money; but at present,
when it takes on that significance, it is not admitted into genteel
circles of language. It may be said to have seen better days, like
another word I have in mind--a word that has become slang, employed in
the sense which once did not exclude it from very good society. A
friend lately informed me that he had "fired" his housekeeper--that
is, dismissed her. He little dreamed that he was speaking excellent
Elizabethan.

THE "Journal des Goncourt" is crowded with beautiful and hideous things,
like a Japanese Museum.

"AND she shuddered as she sat, still silent, on her seat, and he saw
that she shuddered." This is from Anthony Trollope's novel, "Can You
Forgive Her?" Can you forgive him? is the next question.

A LITTLE thing may be perfect, but perfection is not a little thing.
Possessing this quality, a trifle "no bigger than an agate-stone on the
forefinger of an alderman" shall outlast the Pyramids. The world will
have forgotten all the great masterpieces of literature when it forgets
Lovelace's three verses to Lucasta on his going to the wars. More
durable than marble or bronze are the words, "I could not love thee,
deare, so much, loved I not honor more."

I CALLED on the dear old doctor this afternoon to say good-by. I shall
probably not find him here when I come back from the long voyage which
I have in front of me. He is very fragile, and looks as though a puff
of wind would blow him away. He said himself, with his old-time
cheerfulness, that he was attached to this earth by only a little piece
of twine. He has perceptibly failed since I saw him a month ago; but
he was full of the wise and radiant talk to which all the world
has listened, and will miss. I found him absorbed in a newly made
card-catalogue of his library. "It was absurd of me to have it done," he
remarked. "What I really require is a little bookcase holding only two
volumes; then I could go from one to the other in alternation and always
find each book as fresh as if I never had read it." This arraignment of
his memory was in pure jest, for the doctor's mind was to the end like
an unclouded crystal. It was interesting to note how he studied himself,
taking his own pulse, as it were, and diagnosing his own case in a sort
of scientific, impersonal way, as if it were somebody else's case and he
were the consulting specialist. I intended to spend a quarter of an hour
with him, and he kept me three hours. I went there